While formal exercise, such as biking or walking, is an efficient way to burn calories, you may not always be able to commit as much time as you’d like to these activities. Even if you do manage to carve out 30 to 60 minutes for formal exercise, sitting for the majority of the other 23 hours in the day can increase your risk of early death from all causes, according to a study of more than 200,000 people published in the March 26, 2012 issue of the “Archives of Internal Medicine.” Climbing a flight of stairs whenever you get a chance can help you combat “sitting disease” and burn more calories to keep your weight in check or even drop pounds.

Signficance of Calories

The number of calories you burn daily helps determine your weight. If you consume more calories than you burn, you gain weight. If you keep the intake and output of calories relatively equal, you maintain your weight. If you consume fewer calories than you burn, you lose weight. Burning additional calories by climbing stairs allows you to eat more calories daily to maintain your weight, or can help expedite weight loss by increasing the deficit between calories consumed and calories burned.

NEAT

Adding flights of stairs during the day qualifies as non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT. The small movements you do during the day – from tying your shoes to walking to the kitchen to climbing stairs – contribute to the total number of calories you burn daily. When you sit, you burn about one calorie per minute. Any activity that increases this calorie-burn rate is positive. People who do a lot of NEAT activities burn as much as 20 percent more calories daily than their sedentary counterparts, notes registered dietitian Charlotte Scott of Intermountain Healthcare. Performing NEAT also helps counteract the negative effects of sitting too much, contributing to greater quality of life and longevity.

Calories Burned Stair Climbing

Taking two flights of stairs daily helps you burn enough calories to drop 6 pounds in a year, reports Reader’s Digest. If you can up that to two minutes of climbing, five times per week – the calorie burn is equivalent to adding an extra 36-minute walk per week. If you add stairs to a formal exercise routine, you can also burn more calories than walking on level ground. Carry an 8-pound dumbbell in each hand as you go upstairs – on a step mill machine or the staircase in your own home – and a 155-pound person burns 422 calories in an hour. Compare this to the 267 calories burned walking on level ground at 3.5 miles per hour for one hour.

Strategy

If you don’t want to formalize your stair climbing by making it part of your workout routine, simply take advantage of a flight of stairs as often as possible. Skip the elevator at work or at the doctor’s office. Seek out the stairs at the mall or at the museum. If you have stairs at home, instead of piling all the things you need to take upstairs at the bottom for one trip later in the day – take each item up individually. These movements may seem small, but they add up and contribute to a higher metabolic rate.

About the Author

Andrea Cespedes is a professionally trained chef who has focused studies in nutrition. With more than 20 years of experience in the fitness industry, she coaches cycling and running and teaches Pilates and yoga. She is an American Council on Exercise-certified personal trainer, RYT-200 and has degrees from Princeton and Columbia University.